You’re the leader of a baseball team packed with enormous hitting talent: three to four times the hitting talent on most teams.

But wait. All’s not well in this hitting paradise. Your hot-hitting team, fortified with eight players hitting over .313, finishes the season in last place –40 games BEHIND the winning team in your division.

No way!! That’s so far-fetched that could never happen. No way, you say. Just check the baseball history books.

You’ll find the ragged-pitching, hot-hitting Philadelphia Phillies in 1930 suffered through 102 lost games and finished 40 games behind the pennant- winning St. Louis Cardinals. What happened?

These Philadelphia Phillies were bat rich and pitch poor. Their hitters were blazing hot. But their pitchers were freezing cold. The Phillies pitching staff gave up a whopping 6.7 earned runs per game and allowed more than 500 hits more than the Cardinals.

Teams teem with balance. That’s why the most effective leaders realize you need the balance of both the offense and defense to win in sports, in business, in life.

Swinging from the vine, Tarzan’s yell trumpeted throughout the jungle, blasting his personal signature in the movies with an ear-piercing, attention-commanding roar.

Yet in reality, Tarzan’s yell was comprised of three different male voices collaborating together to record cinema history.

Tarzan’s Scream Team is an instructive metaphor for the way the most effective leaders collaborate to assure their collective message is heard, understood and acted upon by the broadest set of followers.

Collaboration enhances overall performance. In the jungle and in the sky. Take a look at the North Star. It’s revelatory to note that

Look closely at a single feather of a peacock’s tail and you’ll see a dull brown color. But, collectively, those dull colored individual feathers display a spectacular array of colors. Out of many individually lifeless feathers comes collectively one brilliant blast of beauty.

Physicists call this phenomenon “Diffraction.” The colorful plume blossoms like a bouquet of flowers from the way light is diffracted from and through each of the other dull brown feathers.

Leaders call this phenomenon – the power of teamwork- where the power of many strengthens the scope and significance of an individual entity. Out of many, one. E pluribus Unum.

No wonder the most effective leaders know how to fan the peacock’s plume—COLLECTIVELY– rather than simply focus on managing each feather individually. After all, an ant weighs one ten-thousandth of an ounce yet collectively all ants on earth weigh more than all the humans on earth. Continue reading “TEAMWORK: Reflecting Off Each Other”→

Here’s an idea to bring out the best in your team. Reading time: 3:23.

The executive offered a champagne toast, sipping the bubbly out of one of her high heel shoes. Her staff was astounded as she playfully kicked off her shoe; reached into a box of new shoes; held one of the new patent leather shoes as if it were a glass and began pouring the champagne in it.

Maybe the strain of the highly stressful but successful project just completed had finally gotten the best of her.

“You are the best. You deserve more than a traditional toast for all the work you did in making this project a success.”

The executive had a method to her madness. She used the champagne-in-a-slipper toast as a leadership lesson that few ever have forgotten.

Turns out those fairy tale writers may have been on to something when they told of heroes drinking out of a slipper.

Scientists say the leather in the slipper accentuates the flavor and aroma of the champagne. The leather contains nitrogen which brings out the best flavor in the champagne.

That’s what leaders do. They bring out the best in others. They build teams two by two. It all begins with that first pairing, that first combination of talents that stirs the creative pot and brings out the best in each.

Savor some peanuts and chocolate together or German Beer and black radishes or a martini and an olive and you’ll taste the leadership difference –where protein taste agents bring out the best in the carbohydrates.